Oh and one more thing, comparing a single GPU to anything else other than another single GPU is kinda dumb. Yes I do realize that you can SLI 8800GT's for less $$$ but not everyone wants to deal with nvidia chipsets and the other numerous issues that are related to SLI.

Give it a couple of months and the prices will be down along with much better drivers, early adapters always pay the price. I know I learned my lesson with the 8800GTX so this time I will sit back happily with my single 8800GT until the dust settles.

What was expected? Something that will outperform the GX2 considering it has a lot more optimised execution units, larger register file, higher texturing performance, 140GB/s bandwidth vs around 70GB/s for the GX2, 1GB framebuffer so it doesn't choke once you go over 512MB of textures like the 512MB cards do when you use super high res and AA and it won't have the micro-stuttering that cripples both SLI or Misfire multi-GPU solutions.

Micro-stuttering is easy, it's a single GPU so it doesn't have that. Everything else, so far not delivered upon yet.

I just looked at more of the benchmarks that are out there and the 280 is ridiculously fast in some games... but like I said before, the only game I can think of that desperately needs more performance is Crysis, and the 280 just doesn't do all that much there.

And it doesn't seem like an engine limitation because older cards in SLI are overtaking the 280 easily in those benchmarks.

I would agree completely. I'm not really sure what is going on in Crysis but it could be a bug that needs to be addressed.

I think part of the problem is everyone can't get passed this game as their primary comparision because it is the "system killer". However, one game cannot paint a picture for every other game on the market. It gives you a general idea (much like 3dmark) but as we've seen with 3dmark it can vary significantly.

If you saw I made a little edit a couple of posts ago, I really do think that once we get a couple of other games like Crysis that come out this year (ie Alan Wake) they might have even bigger gaps between older and newer hardware.

What was expected? Something that will outperform the GX2 considering it has a lot more optimised execution units, larger register file, higher texturing performance, 140GB/s bandwidth vs around 70GB/s for the GX2, 1GB framebuffer so it doesn't choke once you go over 512MB of textures like the 512MB cards do when you use super high res and AA and it won't have the micro-stuttering that cripples both SLI or Misfire multi-GPU solutions.

Micro-stuttering is easy, it's a single GPU so it doesn't have that. Everything else, so far not delivered upon yet.

Once again you are not comparing apples to apples.......a single GPU should be compared against another single GPU, not a GX2 card or 8800GT's in SLI.

Im not gonna get in a pissing match here but you are really calling the shots way to early on the GTX 280. Give it a few driver revisions and then you will have something to talk about if it does not get better, until then its to early to tell.

I would agree completely. I'm not really sure what is going on in Crysis but it could be a bug that needs to be addressed.

I think part of the problem is everyone can't get passed this game as their primary comparision because it is the "system killer". However, one game cannot paint a picture for every other game on the market. It gives you a general idea (much like 3dmark) but as we've seen with 3dmark it can vary significantly.

Very well said and Crysis IMO is a complete failure. I would not be surprised if that game doesnt ever perform the way that it should, EA is not even gonna bother with anymore patches because they know its a waste of time even though they will never admit to it.

I would agree completely. I'm not really sure what is going on in Crysis but it could be a bug that needs to be addressed.

I think part of the problem is everyone can't get passed this game as their primary comparision because it is the "system killer". However, one game cannot paint a picture for every other game on the market. It gives you a general idea (much like 3dmark) but as we've seen with 3dmark it can vary significantly.

Yeah, if it weren't for Crysis, this would be a great improvement.

Still not as much as the 8800 was at release, but definitely a solid jump in speed.

I guess the 8800 series was just too damned efficient for its own good. Its hard to improve on it apparently.

If I had a large amount of money to burn i might buy a 280, but it just doesn't seem reasonable considering I play all my games (except crysis) at 2048x1536 or 1600x1200 already. Being able to add 4xAA would be nice, but its not worth $600 to me.

If I had a large amount of money to burn i might buy a 280, but it just doesn't seem reasonable considering I play all my games (except crysis) at 2048x1536 or 1600x1200 already. Being able to add 4xAA would be nice, but its not worth $600 to me.

I am in the same boat, I have a 22inch LCD and game at 1680X1050 and my trusty 8800GT is plenty for most games at that resolution along with 4XAA and 16XAF.

Maybe in the fall I will consider upgrading but for now I am happy with my $150.00 card.

Another thing worth noting is that most of these benchmarks done at really high resolutions with AA enabled are most likely making the 512Mb cards run out of memory, which will lower average framerates quite a bit. If you look at benchmarks that list the 8800GTX and Ultra along with the 512Mb cards, the GTX and Ultra tend to perform much closer to the 280.

Very well said and Crysis IMO is a complete failure. I would not be surprised if that game doesnt ever perform the way that it should, EA is not even gonna bother with anymore patches because they know its a waste of time even though they will never admit to it.

I wouldn't say that Crysis is a complete failure at all. It is by far one of the best looking games on the market right now. When they designed the game they were likely able to exploit a few features on the 8 series cards that allowed them to get some extra performance. A new card came out and maybe some of those tweaks no longer work due to changes, so someone needs to figure out what is holding the card back and get it fully optimized.

The biggest hump that this game had is it doesn't run well on most hardware that was available on launch. To me it is a double edged sword. They are touting the best graphics but in order to run the game smoothly you can't turn them up which kind of defeated the purpose. This card gets its performance much closer but it wouldn't make much sense for Nvidia to design a card around 1 game.

In all honesty a lot of people just need to get their noses out of the Crysis benchmarks and look at the others because its impossible to say that the GTX280 is not impressive considering its on launch drivers and competing against cards that are on very mature drivers.

Crysis is a failure and EA has given up on it so you may as well just get over it and move along as its not the only game out there to play anyway.

You cant ignore the other benches out there and you certainly cannot deny that this isnt an impressive leap considering the early state of drivers.

And whats all this talk about the GX2 anway? because unless we are talking about Crysis it looks to me that this single GPU has no problem with the GX2 and this is on early drivers.

After a few price drops and some revised drivers this will be the card to beat!